Survivor Talk Sundays: Eva Rival

Every survivor’s story is unique and provides a special, first-hand account of life before, during, and after the Holocaust. Hearing from local Michigan survivors helps us see all the victims of the Holocaust as real people who had–and lost–family, friends, and communities. Please join us on Sundays to listen to a survivor speaker. Eva Rival Eva Rival (nee Folkman) was born in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, in 1941. As an infant, she was taken with her mother to a transit camp, but her father managed to rescue her, while her mother was later deported to Auschwitz and killed. To keep her safe, Eva’s father had her baptized and hidden with an Austrian woman under a false identity, narrowly avoiding capture. After the war, she was reunited with her father in postwar Czechoslovakia and later immigrated to the United States in 1967. “This shouldn’t be forgotten. That’s why we’re doing this interview, because this way our grandkids can look it up. It needs to be done in such a way that it isn’t too difficult to look up. It does make a person stronger to go through all kinds of perils like that. They should try to be strong too, even if they have a good life.”